Madeleine Rizan, a widow of Nay near Pau, had been hemiplegic on her left side for twenty-four years following a stroke in 1834. The arm was useless, the leg paralysed, and she had been confined to a chair or bed for nearly a quarter-century. Her daughter, hearing of the spring at Massabielle, brought her a bottle of the water in October 1858.
On October 17 Madeleine drank a little of the water, made the sign of the cross over her crippled side, and the paralysis vanished in an instant. She stood, walked, and resumed normal household work. She lived another twenty years. The cure was one of the seven recognised by Bishop Laurence in his decree of January 18, 1862.